Hi, my name is Nate, and I’m a 25 year old father, husband, and follower of Jesus Christ/Yeshua the Messiah. Like I’ve said elsewhere on this site, I had an interesting and difficult relationship with faith growing up, often feeling stifled by all of the rules and “don’t do this’s.” In 2018, I went to a youth retreat and made a profession of faith after the speaker gave a deeply moving description of the sacrifice Christ made for us. It was beautiful, but unfortunately I was still a very thorny soil at the time (with a lot of rocks mixed in) and it wasn’t long at all before I started to let my attitude and behavior slide right back into the sad, sorry state it was in before.

When I started college later that year, my spiral continued, slow-ish at first, but gradually increasing in speed. Looking back, I genuinely question the sincerity of my original profession in light of many of the choices I made. I was active in my congregation at the time, a Messianic Jewish Synagogue, but I was also actively rebelling against my parents and participating in a lot of the usual ungodly nonsense and sin that a college kid gets up to.

For the next 6 years I got worse and worse, putting on a decent front but living like the arrogant, rebellious, wicked fool that I really was from week to week. It wasn’t until early 2023, when my (now) wife and I started talking more, that I really started to try to shape up, though I was still inwardly resistant to change. I was still selfish at heart, but had enough youthful pride and ignorance to cling to what little good I had like a life preserver.

In June 2025, God got ahold of me and, for lack of a better term, put the fear of Him into me through an unexpected illness. I spent weeks and weeks wrestling with my current and past behaviors and having to let go of a lot of things, but was finally brought to terms with my sin. Now that I’m on the other side of that experience, I have a passion to encourage others that may be dealing with some of the same struggles or questions that I have/have had, then and now. I hope to reassure others that, by the grace of God, they can find forgiveness and salvation in the loving arms of Christ who, though He may reprove us sternly, does so out of the greatest possible care and mercy. It won’t always be pleasant- He caused me to experience fear like I’ve never felt before- but if we will yield to Him, it will be productive and ultimately serve for the redemption of our very souls.

If you are anything at all like me, you likely have or have had a deep sense of lingering shame over your sins. After all, we have sinned willfully, trampling like fools the Son of God. If this is the case for you, take heart! In the middle of my questioning my dad shared a scripture with me that I have been clinging to for these last several months, and I think it may help you; Ezekiel 33:10-16:

“10 “Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus you have spoken, saying, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?”’ 11 Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’12 And you, son of man, say to your fellow citizens, ‘The righteousness of a righteous man will not deliver him in the day of his transgression, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble because of it in the day when he turns from his wickedness; whereas a righteous man will not be able to live by his righteousness on the day when he commits sin.’13 When I say to the righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. 14 But when I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, 15 if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 16 None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live.”

If you are a brother or sister that has fallen into sin, or a non-believer that has stumbled onto this page and is hearing the Holy Spirit calling, I encourage you to look at this passage of scripture, like I have, as a beacon of hope. God takes no pleasure in your death and ultimate destruction, just as He would have taken no pleasure in mine, and He would rather that we all turn to Him and live. Now is the time, today is the day; put your faith in Jesus Christ and choose life.

I hope you are edified by what I have shared here, and look forward to going on this journey of study and sanctification with you, whoever you are. God bless you, and see you next time!